Miss Grimsleys Oxford Career Read Online Free PDF Page B

letter in hand, as she walked slowly back to the house. She turned the letter over, hopeful of further enlightenment. Surely there was some mistake. She wanted to take geography and geometry too, if it was offered.
    She folded the letter.
Surely I can discuss this with the headmistress when I arrive
, she thought.
    Mama could spare none of the maids to accompany her to Oxford. Papa was forced to prevail upon his sister to act as escort. Aunt Shreve accepted with alacrity, declaring it a pleasure and presenting the squire with two more forgotten bottles of Fortaleza, to his great amazement and grudging approval.
    “There now,” she declared. “Charles, you have enough Fortaleza to toast Horatia, and her first child, and Ralph's entrance into Oxford—if you have the unexpected good sense to send him there instead of to a beastly counting house in the City. You can also celebrate Gordon's leaving of Oxford eventually, if that should ever happen before we are too gnarled to pop a cork.”
    Brother and sister had declared a wary truce and were sitting knee to knee over the tea table in Aunt Shreve's house. Ellen cast anxious glances at her papa throughout the interview.
    He surprised his daughter by managing a ponderous joke. “What, no bottle for Ellen?” he asked. “She may marry someday, if we can force her nose out of books, or if she is not off exploring the world in a birchbark canoe.”
    Aunt Shrive smiled at her favorite niece. “I wasn't going to tell you this, Charles, but years ago Father gave me a bottle of Palais Royal brandy.”
    The squire choked on his tea. “My word, sister,” he exclaimed when he could breathe again. “I doubt there is another bottle in England!”
    “Quite likely,” his sister agreed as she poured more tea. “I am depending upon Ellen to make a fabulous alliance.” She set down the cup and fixed her brother with the stare that had probably made him writhe when they were growing up. “
When
she is good and ready, Charles. Then I will open the Palais Royal.”
    Thinking back on that artless disclosure, Ellen laughed softly to herself.
Mama declares that since I scared off the vicar, the best I can hope for is Thomas Cornwell. Horatia claims that she can find me someone among her darling Edwin's circle of rattlebrained acquaintances.
She shook her head.
None of these paragons would be worth Palais Royal. I suppose I must make the exertion on my own.
    Aunt Shreve joined her in the village and they continued east across rolling fields shorn of sheep that dotted the landscape in other seasons. The trees had all molted their leaves in great piles, leaving skeletal branches that bore no promise of spring in the near future.
“Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang,”
she thought, her mind upon Ralph and his everlasting Shakespeare.
    “Perhaps I should study Shakespeare, in honor of Ralph,” she said out loud. She dug in her reticule for the letter from Miss Dignam and held it out to her aunt. “See here, Aunt, they have me down for nothing more strenuous than French and embroidery; I believe that I will request geography and Shakespeare, at least. I am not afraid of scholarship.”
    Aunt Shreve put on her spectacles and read the letter. She leaned back, the look on her face telling Ellen that she was choosing her words with care.
    “My dear, I hope you will not be too disappointed if Miss Dignam's falls short of your expectations,” she began. “I have never been there, but I do not know that study for women is serious anywhere.”
    Ellen waved her hand and reclaimed the letter. “Oh, that is all right, Aunt. If they only teach the tragedies of Shakespeare and not the more ribald comedies, I can be forgiving!”
    The sun broke through the weight of autumn clouds by late afternoon and their entrance into Oxford. The post chaise had slowed to the movement of farm carts that trundled toward the ford of the Thames called, in true scholar's eccentricity, the Isis, while